Meet Me In Montana
by J9
Summary: Set in 2006, Frank leaves the team.


**Title:** Meet Me In Montana  
**Author: ** Jeanine (jeanine@iol.ie)  
**Rating:** PG  
**Spoilers:** Everything in general and nothing in particular  
**Feedback:** Makes my day  
**Disclaimer:** If it was in the show, it's not mine.  
**Archive:** At my site (The Band Gazebo , Fanfiction.net; anywhere else, please ask.  
**Summary:** Frank walks away from the team  
**Author's Notes: **Not a fandom I intended to write for, but then I read Shane Salerno's comments about Frank's life, and this is the song that popped right into my head... and of course, since I can't seem to write one-shots, there is more in the works where this one came from! 

***

__

Won't you meet me in Montana?  
I want to see the mountains in your eyes  
I've had all of this life I can handle  
Meet me underneath that big Montana sky

***

In the end, he realised that she was right. She'd always been right. Five years ago, he'd tried to tell her that it was time for him to retire, that he'd had enough. He'd been ready to go to Montana with her, raise horses and children for the rest of their lives, and be happy, with her, without bombs and guns and hostage negotiations and team members who wouldn't do as they were told. 

He'd all but packed his bags. She was the one who'd said no, stopped him with three little words. 

"You're not done," was all she'd said. 

He'd thought she was wrong, had been so sure that she was wrong, but he knew better than to tell her that in so many words. "How do you know?" he'd asked instead, and she'd just given him one of those sassy smiles that made him love her in the first place. 

"I know everything," she'd replied, walking away, ending the conversation. 

So, with her consultation, on her advice, he'd taken the UC job in Chicago, and while it had taken him a while to settle in, even longer for the team to fully accept him as their leader, it had worked out. He'd been happy there, doing his level best to keep his job and his personal life separate, to the point that Cody made cracks about his lack of emotion, pondering when he was built and the like. Donovan had let the crack roll off his back. It didn't anger him, because that was the way that he wanted it. He knew that it was the only way that he could survive on the job was not to ever let those two separate facets of his life meet. 

He'd done well at it until three years ago. 

That time, he'd really been sure that he was done. It had been too close in more ways than one, a bullet mere millimetres away from his heart, only luck and a good surgeon saving his life. As it was, the recuperation had been long and difficult, and he'd gone home to Montana for a great deal of it, and he'd wondered if he should stay there that time. Certainly, none of the team would blame him, nor would their supervisors. And he was acutely aware that had his luck not held, he would have been leaving her not only with two three-year-old children, but also with another on the way, a son or a daughter that he would have never seen. 

He didn't want that. So, sitting on the front porch of the ranch house, his arms around her, hands resting on her swollen belly, watching their children chase tumbleweeds, he told her that he was done. That he wasn't going back to Chicago. She'd twisted in his arms, looked at him for a long moment, then pressed her lips to his. He'd closed his eyes at the contact and when he opened them again, she'd been shaking her head sadly. "You're not done yet," she'd told him again, and he'd disagreed with her. 

"What if something had happened to me Bel?" he'd asked practically. "You and the kids-"

"You're not done," she interrupted firmly, her hand still on his cheek, her tone leaving no room for argument. "When you are, you'll know, and I'll know. But it's not time yet."

He'd disagreed, but he'd let the matter drop, and when his recuperation was complete, they'd done what they'd done three years previous; gone back to Chicago. This time, they were a family of five, not four and after a couple of weeks back, once again, he'd had to admit that she was right. He wasn't done. She hadn't said a thing, just smiled, and he'd taken her to the airport and kissed her and the kids goodbye as they went back to Montana without him. 

He'd gone back to working undercover with Jake and Alex and Monica and Cody, and it was just like the shooting never happened. The first crack in their happy little dysfunctional family had come nine months ago when Alex left. Donovan had seen it coming for a long time, her growing dissatisfaction with what they were doing, her increasing aloofness. He hadn't been surprised when she told him what she wanted to do, nor when she asked him to help her track down Carlos Cortez. He'd called in every marker he had, and when she'd heard what he was doing, so had Bel, and between them, they found where he was, on a small island in the Caribbean. Alex had handed in her resignation the second that he'd given her the news, and she'd left a fortnight later. Diana Black, her replacement, settled in quickly, got on well with the rest of the team, but for Donovan, it was like something had shifted subtly, but unalterably, and it was never the same after that. 

He'd tried not to notice it, but there were some things that wouldn't be denied, and it all came to a head yesterday, when he'd dodged a bullet, literally, by a hair's breadth. Jake had shouted a warning, he'd ducked just in time. When he was crouching down, Jake had shot the marksman, and when Donovan straightened up, Jake was checking to make sure that he was dead. But Donovan's gaze had been fixed on where the bullet was, dead level with his forehead, and a shiver ran down his spine at what would have happened had Jake not shouted when he did, or had his own reflexes not been quite so fast. 

He'd called Montana that night, talking to Bel and the kids, neglecting to tell her the details of his close escape. He'd listened to Jeremy and Beth tell him about Mommy teaching them to ride the horses, heard Jessie complain about how she was still too little to learn, and he'd tried to sell Bel on the reason that he was finding it so hard to speak past the lump in his throat was that he just missed them. 

Then he'd walked into the nest that morning and told the team his decision. They'd been shocked at first, just like when Alex had told them that she was moving on. But they'd reacted better to his announcement he thought, not least because they'd met Bel and they'd met the kids, and they knew what his family meant to him. They'd wished him well, told him not to be a stranger, and he'd tossed his keys to Jake, with the words, "You're in charge now." The surprise and pride on the younger man's face had been a picture. 

Donovan had gone straight to the airport, taking the next flight to Billings, and then he'd driven until he'd seen the familiar turn-off, the narrow dirt road leading to the ranch his father had loved so well. The front porch was deserted when he pulled up, and he wondered if they were all at dinner. Not worrying about that, he left his bags in the car for later, going into the main house, calling out his greeting. A small, elderly woman, red hair still bright, emerged from the kitchen, her eyes wide in surprise. "Mr Donovan!" she said. "We weren't expecting you!"

Donovan shrugged, not bothering to tell her to call him by his first name. He'd done that every year, but the foreman's wife was a woman of habit, who had never called the ranch owner by their Christian names in forty years, and wasn't going to start with him. That was what she always told him anyway. "I didn't call ahead Irene," he said, offering her an apologetic smile. "I wanted to surprise everyone."

"Well, you surely will. And I think we have a surprise for you." She motioned to follow her, and upon entering the kitchen, Donovan had to suppress a smile. Sitting in the middle of the flour, a blanket of white covering and surrounding her, staring into the oven as if the secrets of the universe were contained therein, was his youngest child. "We were making cookies," Irene told him quietly, and he couldn't help but laugh. 

The noise had the toddler's head whipping around, and her blue eyes widened in surprise and delight as she saw him standing there. "Daddy!" she squealed, rising more quickly than he would have thought possible, flying towards him as he bent to pick her up in a floury hug. 

"How about we go find Mommy?" were his first words to her, and she nodded happily. 

"They're in the back paddock," Irene called after him, as he carried Jessie out the door. The child burbled her news to him on the walk down, telling him that Jeremy hadn't wanted to help them bake cookies, and that Beth had, but that she'd changed her mind when Mommy said that she'd go out riding with him. Donovan knew that Beth hated missing anything her twin brother got to do, so he wasn't surprised at that news, and as he listened to Jessie's chatter, he did his best to wipe the flour from her face and out of her dark hair, but he didn't have too much luck at it. 

It didn't take long to reach the back paddock, and when he did, he saw a single horse, a black thoroughbred stallion, the ranch's pride and joy, being taken through his paces by a lone rider. Her back was straight in the saddle, her long black hair loose down her back, a contrast to her white blouse and pale blue jeans. He recognised her idea of a cooling down exercise, and he couldn't take his eyes off her, wondering what in the world had kept him away from her, from them, for this long. 

His attention was diverted by twin screams from his other children once they saw him, and just like Jessie, they ran to him. He still had Jessie in his arms, so he couldn't hug them, so they had to be content for each wrapping their arms around one of his legs, grinning up at him, each trying at once to tell him their news. He convinced them to release him, years of F.B.I. negotiation experience paying dividends, and when they did, he squatted down beside them, placing Jessie down on the ground, drawing all three children into a group hug. 

When he stood from that, he looked across the paddock and saw that she'd dismounted from the horse, and that she was standing at the fence now, staring at them as if she was trying to fix the moment in her memory. As he looked, she reached up and took off her riding helmet, hanging it on the fence post, climbing up and over the fence easily, beginning to walk towards them. 

Disentangling himself from the children, freeing his hands, placing one of Jessie's in Beth's, the other in Jeremy's, he fixed the twins with his best fatherly look of instruction. "Stay with your sister," he ordered, and they nodded solemnly, beginning to argue over a game of chasing as he began to walk towards her. 

They met more or less halfway, and now he could see that even though she was beaming, her eyes were shining with moisture. "You're early," she told him, and he lifted an eyebrow in surprise. "Six weeks, four days, three hours and seventeen minutes to be exact," she added, and he smiled as he figured out that she'd been counting down the days to his projected arrival, just as he had been. 

"Funny," he said now, choosing not to mention that. "Feels like I'm right on time."

She looked at him curiously, tilting her head, eyes narrowed. "It does?" Her words were a question with many layers, and he just nodded. 

"I'm done Bel," he told her quietly. "I've had all of that life I can handle. I'm done."

She held his gaze for a long moment, sizing him up, just as she had done on the other two occasions he'd uttered those words to her. After what seemed like an eternity, she nodded, and a tear rolled down her cheek. "Then welcome home," she whispered, stepping towards him and winding her arms around his neck. 

Their lips met in a kiss the like of which they'd shared a thousand times before. This time however, as the clouds flew past them in the bright blue sky, as the Montana mountains surrounded them, ringing to their children's laughter, it wasn't a hello, or a goodbye, or an expression of love. It was all of those things, and it was more. It was a promise of a new life for them, a new beginning for their family. As she pulled away from him, smiling up at him, she whispered, "Let's go inside," and she looked taken aback when he shook his head, instead waving the kids over to them. 

"Let's go for a walk," he countered. "Show me what's going on in the place."

She looked surprised, but she nodded, and he lifted up Jessie, while Jeremy took his free hand, Beth reaching for her mother's, and the Donovan family walked together towards the horizon, into their new life, together. 


End file.
